Why Teach for America is BS and an entire overhaul of our education system is needed.

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I know that vI said that I was done with Feministe, but....


Why I Hate Teach for America

But teaching is one of those careers that doesn’t lend itself to career switching. It’s one of those careers where the longer you do it, the better you get at it (though I’m sure there are limits to this, depending on the person). And, unlike, say, a job as a copy-editor or an architect or an art dealer, when you are a teacher it really matters that you be good at what you do, since there is no one to catch and correct your mistakes before they’ve poisoned your students’ learning experiences in some way or another. If it is your job to make sure that a bunch of six year olds learn basic reading skills, and you fail, you may have just seriously fucked some six year olds. Maybe most of them will catch up in the second grade, but maybe some wont (especially if their second grade teacher is also straight out of the pre-service training…). If it is your job to make sure a bunch of 19 year olds understand basic math concepts well enough to pass a high school exit exam, and you fail, some of those students might never go back and graduate.

I’m not saying any of this to overstate the importance of teachers in the lives or their students or to freakout any first, second, third, or fourth year teachers about their individual failures (myself, obviously, included). Every new (and veteran) teacher is allowed to make mistakes. Further, I’m not saying that teachers are obligated to stay forever in shitty work environments with principals and administration that treat them badly, or in careers that they don’t find satisfying. What I’m getting at is that there is something wrong with a system that floods poorly performing schools with inexperienced teachers who leave just as they are becoming experienced teachers.

Which is why I hate Teach for America.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big fan of the New York City Teaching Fellows either. I’m not defending NYCTF for it’s faults, which include provided precious little support and training for their new teachers as well as frightenly high turnover rates. According to a 2007 Village Voice article, by their fifth year teaching, less than fifty percent of Teaching Fellows remain from a given cohort. But at least in NYCTF the high turnover rate is seen as a failure. In TFA, the high turnover rate is designed as part of the program. TFA members are expected to leave teaching after their two-year commitment is up, those who continue to teach are seen as the exception.

TFA members are not required by Teach for America to pursue a masters in education (which, especially if you do not have an undergraduate degree in education is required to become permanently certified in most states), although some of the states where TFA has program sites require teachers to at least begin taking graduate courses as part of their alternative certification requirements. They don’t require teachers to take the steps to become permanently certified because there is no expectation that their teachers will stay in teaching once their two-year resume-building experience is over. How do I know? Because it’s on their website!

Educational inequality is our nation’s greatest injustice. You can change this.
The first three drop down tags at the top of the TFA website read, “What We Do,” “The Core Experience,” “After the Corps.” Teaching is not a career for this organization, it is an “experience.” You can write about it in your annual Christmas letter and show up your cousins who went straight to law school instead of differing for two years to work in the inner city. You now have some “cred” when talking about why No Child Left Behind sucks. Oh, and, of course, you can put it on your resume.
And TFA will help you make that resume! Just check out the “After the Corps” section of their website. It’s chock full of career services and options of what you can do after you’ve gotten tired of “closing the education gap.” They even have partnerships with various employers such as Morgan Stanley, Deloitte, JP Morgan, and Lehman Brothers, all of which allow TFA members to defer their high paying jobs as management consultants and financial analysts to teach for two years in the trenches of underachieving schools.
Still not convinced? Listen to how much those two years of teaching forever changed this TFA alumnus:
Looking back, I’m so glad I chose to teach before embarking on this next phase of my career. I developed skills that empowered me to excel beyond my peers in business school: organization, effective time management, dexterity in communication and public speaking, and the ability to think on my feet. The responsibilities I shouldered in the classroom prepared me like nothing else could for the challenges of management, communication, and intense focus that characterize my current position, where I conduct industry research, create financial models, identify industry trends, and explain their implications.
-Scott, an analyst at Lehman Brothers
Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that what teaching is all about? Becoming a better financial analyst?MORE

Poor children used as a resume padder for people to vault into top jobs in upper class firms. How sweet.